


Even before I knew your name (I was always yours)

by ziallerslouve



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Exchange Student AU, F/M, Halloween, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trick or Treating, just mentioned along the way, like really really minor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 00:44:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4898995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziallerslouve/pseuds/ziallerslouve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn has to help Louis with his Irish exchange student and it's the last thing he wants to do in school. But when he sees Niall he thinks that maybe babysitting Louis' exchange student isn't so bad after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't finished yet and i don't really know how far I still have to go with it (in the end it will maybe have 3 chapters), but because it's halloween soon, I have to post the first part now :) i hope you enjoy, i don't own any of the characters in this story etc.  
> you can find me on tumblr (ziallerslouve), feedback is always appreciated! :)  
> title is from always yours by keywest

Why the fuck did he have to babysit Louis' exchange student? Why did Louis choose especially the week of the arrival of the exchange students to be sick? Zayn was so annoyed, he didn't really like meeting new people and it definitely didn't make it any better that they were from Ireland and didn't know a thing about his school. They were supposed to meet at the library, which was the only part that wasn't annoying, there he spent most of his time anyway.   


"Hey, umm...Louis said you'd probably be here..."

 

A small blonde guy with stunningly blue eyes approached the table he was sitting at and was obviously talking to him, as there was no one else near them. But all Zayn could do was stare into his ocean blue eyes.   


"Uh, Zayn, right?" The ocean blue eyes were staring back at him, uncertainty visible in them.   


"Oh sorry, yeah, yeah, I'm Zayn. How'd you know?"  


"Oh that's easy. Louis said I should look for the hot guy who was the only one actually reading in here, so you weren't all that hard to find. The first point would've been enough though." He smiled.

 

More like: it looked like the sun was shining out of his whole face.   
Zayn wasn’t sure if he was hearing correctly, but if he did so, the cute Irish one had just called him hot.

Zayn was staring at him until he finally gathered his thoughts and got out of his daze.  


"So....I'm supposed to show you around today, right?" He managed to ask with a mostly steady voice.   


"Yeah, Louis threw up all over the place, he couldn’t make it this morning. I could smell his vomit all morning, couldn't even eat properly and that's saying something, I'm always hungry. It was disgusting, all he ate yesterday came up again and..."  


Zayn interrupted Niall's stories about Louis' vomiting. "Ugh, thanks, that's enough, I didn't want to know that."   


"I'm sorry mate, I can't filter my words." Niall was blushing. He was actually blushing.   


"Nah, no worries, figured that out already. And now? Aren’t we supposed to meet the others from the exchange sometime?”

 

“Oh yeah, shit, I completely forgot. Ah then you’re gonna meet my friend Harry, you’re gonna love him!”

And there it was again. The smile that outshone the sun.

 

 

The meeting point was in front of the library, so all they had to do was walk outside the door. As they did, Zayn was greeted by a large crowd of people, half of them with an Irish accent, the other half with a Southern American accent. It was very loud because both parts were known for talking a lot and Zayn was slightly overwhelmed. He wanted to turn to Niall because he was the only one he knew right now, but the lad was already off to his friends.

 

“Zayn!” A voice called out to him just then. He turned around only to see Liam, one of his best friends, waving. He walked over to him, glad for the distraction.

“Liam, I’m glad you’re here. Those people are…um...”

“Loud, I know.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“What are you doing here though?” Liam asked. “You don’t even have an exchange student, do you?”

“No, I don’t really have one, I have to take care of Louis’ for today, he’s sick.”

“Oh right…but isn’t it great meeting people from back home?” Liam looked genuinely excited. Zayn’s level of excitement wasn’t that high but he had to admit that it actually was nice hearing more than two people talk in a British accent again. Louis’, Liam’s and his family had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, three years ago due to a relocation of the company their dads were working for. They had become best friends since then, being the only British people in Collins Hill, the High School in the small town close to Atlanta where they lived.

“It is! So who’s your exchange partner? Where is he?”

“Um, it’s not a he, it’s a she. Her name is Sophia, she’s that fit girl over there with the brown hair.”

“Fit, huh?” Zayn smirked.

Liam blushed deeply. “Can’t deny that, can I? But don’t you dare act like you’re innocent, I saw you look at that blond lad over there. Is it Louis’?”

Now it was Zayn’s turn to blush. “Yeah well, he’s kind of cute. His name’s Niall.”

 

As if on cue Niall came jogging towards them with a curly haired boy in tow.

 

“So Zayn, I would like to introduce you to my best friend Harry Styles! He’s from Cheshire but moved to Ireland a year ago, only to meet me. And who’s that handsome guy right next to you?”

Zayn couldn’t help but feel jealous at the word handsome but managed to say: “That’s Liam, my best friend. His exchange student is Sophia, you might know her.”

“Ah of course we know her, she’s like the prettiest girl on our school, isn’t she?” Harry said.

Liam only nodded and looked dreamily in her direction. Zayn nudged him and Liam jerked out of his thoughts.

“Oh mate, it already hit you.” Harry said sympathetically. “The widely spread ‘Sophia Feva’ as I like to call it.”

“Okay lads, enough of that now, we should get going, the others left us behind.” Niall chimed in and interrupted their conversation. He hooked his arm around Zayn and pulled him in the direction of the cafeteria where the others were headed to.

Zayn smiled to himself. This was surprisingly nice, he normally wasn’t a guy for fast physical contact. But with Niall it was different. Everything was different at that moment, he wasn’t used to having such a good conversation with people he had just met but Niall and Harry seemed like really good people and it felt like they had known each other a while now. He was confused but he also felt some kind of happiness seeping through his bones. Hopefully this was going to get even better.

 

The following tour through the school wasn’t very exciting for Zayn because he’s been walking through these halls for the last three years, but he and the other guys were having meaningless conversations with a lot of jokes thrown in, so it wasn’t too boring.

When the tour finally ended an hour later the group separated into smaller groups, heading off to their respective classes. Zayn’s next class was English Literature but it didn’t start until 15 minutes later, so he and Niall had a bit of time left. Zayn remembered that Niall mentioned he didn’t have breakfast and that gave Zayn an idea.

 

“Niall, do you wanna come with me? My class doesn’t start quite yet but I want to show you something!”

Niall looked surprised but in a good way. “Where are you bringing me?” he asked curiously. But it wasn’t even necessary anymore, because Zayn had reached his destination, stopping in front of a vending machine selling snacks. He put some coins in the machine and dialed number 22. Waiting for the machine to deliver what he wanted, he turned to Niall, smiling lazily.

 

“Thought you could use something to eat. And here we have…” He reached down to grab the small package “the best cookies you will ever find in this area. I swear to you, this is the best alternative for a normal breakfast.”

Niall smiled at him happily. “Thanks Zayn, I could really use that right now.”

“That’s what I assumed.” He smiled back at him, feeling kind of cheesy but it didn’t bother him enough to change it. He liked being like that around Niall. Especially seeing the effect his lazy smile had on the other boy, who was blushing again and turning his gaze downwards to the cookies, now in his hands.

“Come on, we’ve gotta go to class, I don’t want us to be late on your first day here.”

****

*******

 

“So, what are you doing this afternoon if Louis is still sick?” Zayn asked when the last class had ended.

“Think I’m just gonna sleep and hang a little with his family…I’m really tired, jetlag ‘n stuff, you know?” Niall answered, actually looking pretty tired.

“Yeah, think I’d do that too if I were you. But text me if you wanna do something else, maybe see the city or just drive around a little, alright? I don’t want you getting bored around here.”

“Thanks Z, really appreciate it. But um…” Niall was suddenly blushing again, seeming nervous. “Can I have your number then? Kind of need it if I wanted to text you, don’t I?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Just give me your phone, I’ll save it there.” After he gave the phone back to Niall, he held up his hand in a half attempt at waving. “See you then Niall.” He was about to turn around and walk towards his car, when Niall was calling out to him.

“Zayn, wait!” Niall walked towards him and hugged him tightly. “Thanks for today, I had a lot of fun.”

 

Zayn froze for a second but relaxed very quickly, remembering it was Niall who was hugging him. And he liked hugging Niall, he had to admit. “No problem mate.”

Zayn slowly let go off Niall and walked to his car. He couldn’t fight the smile creeping up on him. He was happy because of Niall. And he knew him for less than a day. Maybe babysitting Louis’ exchange student wasn’t that bad after all.

 

***

**__ **

The next day in school wasn’t very spectacular, he had to sit through all of his classes as usual, but it was more fun with Niall sitting next to him, who was commenting every now and then on the teacher’s way of speaking or the weird behavior of most Americans, which was making Zayn almost laugh out loud every time. He really tried to hide his laugh behind a cough but sometimes it wasn’t that easy and the teachers shot him an angry look, but they didn’t say anything because he usually was a good student and didn’t interrupt the lesson in any way. He was having a lot of fun with Niall and he grew to like him a lot with every passing class and with every time he was the reason for Niall’s bright smile. Niall himself seemed to be enjoying the day too, curiously glancing around the hallways and the classrooms, detecting everything that was different from his home school. When the school day ended, Niall gave him another hug and gone he was. Zayn didn’t stop smiling for the whole way home.

 

The afternoon passed by terribly slowly. Zayn tried to get some school work done but somehow he couldn’t really concentrate, so he decided on sketching because that always made him relax. He took his small sketchpad out of his backpack and began to just lazily draw some lines, he would see what was going to come out in the end. After half an hour Zayn looked down on his drawing and only then realized what it was. The head was encircled by soft hair, the face was soft with rosy cheeks and freckles, the nose was straight, the eyes were shining and the mouth was drawn in the brightest smile possible. It was Niall, smiling his sunshine smile. Zayn was amazed by himself, he would have never thought he could draw Niall that easily out of his mind, without any picture to look at. But it was obvious that it was Niall and that confused Zayn because he didn’t even want to draw him, he just wanted to let it flow. Was Niall already taking up so much of his thoughts? How was that even possible? He barely even knew the boy but yet he thought of him all the time and couldn’t get the smile off his face when he thought about the hug at the end of the school day. Could he really have a crush on someone who he had only just met?

He couldn’t stop thinking about Niall for the whole afternoon and even his mum noticed that he was somewhere else with his thoughts during dinner. All he could say was that school was stressing him out. That wasn’t exactly wrong because if it wasn’t for school he wouldn’t have met Niall.

 

After dinner he went to his room again. He wasn’t doing very much when suddenly, around 11 pm, his phone rang. It was an unknown caller ID but it must be important if that someone was calling him at that time of the night. He picked up and immediately recognized the voice.

 

“Hey Zayn…umm sorry for calling so late.” Niall said. “But I just woke up after I only wanted to nap this afternoon and now I’m awake again and bored. Jetlag sucks, I’m tellin’ you. I hope I didn’t wake you up or am keeping you from going to bed.”

“No Niall, I wasn’t doing much anyway. So, you’re bored? How about I’ll come and get you and we’ll drive around a bit? I know some places which are pretty great at night.”

“I’d love that, but only if you weren’t going to sleep soon. I don’t want to be the reason why you’re going to be tired tomorrow.”

“No that’s alright. I’ll be at Louis’ in 10.” Zayn said and hung up. He was too lazy to change out of his sweatpants, so he just grabbed his car keys and headed out of the door. His whole family was already asleep, they wouldn’t miss him until the next morning.

 

When he arrived at Louis’, Niall was already waiting outside the door. Apparently the rest of the house was sleeping, which made sense, considering Louis had younger sisters and he himself was still sick. Niall ran towards his car and got in, smiling as brightly as ever.

 

“Hi Zayn! Thanks for doing that, you know, you really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to…”

“Hey there. Of course I want to do this, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t, would I?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But still, thank you.” Niall replied, smiling shyly now.

“So, any plans where you want to go?” Zayn asked curiously but knowing that Niall couldn’t have anything planned out, he’s only been in this town for two days.

 

Niall shook his head. “No, thought you’d drive me somewhere actually.”

“Off we go then.” Zayn said, smiled sheepishly at Niall and started the car.

 

Zayn wasn’t quite sure where he should take Niall but decided on his favorite place at night. It was Niall after all. The place he decided to go to wasn’t far away from the school but there was no one at night anyway. It was a 10 minute drive from Louis’ house though and Zayn was afraid that it would get awkward between him and Niall, but Niall was completely carefree, talking about what he was looking for during his exchange which lasted 2 months and singing along to the radio which was playing in the background. When a Michael Bublé song came on and Niall started to sing along enthusiastically, Zayn was completely shocked, in a positive way. Niall’s voice was so soft yet powerful during the chorus and he put so much emotion in the song, it was fascinating to listen to him and to watch him. Was there anything this boy couldn’t do?

 

“Wow Niall, you’re an amazing singer!” Zayn blurted out after the song was over.

“Bublé is my favorite singer, I could probably sing all his songs forwards and backwards.” Niall said, blushing furiously.

“I bet you could sing any other song perfectly too, with a voice like yours.” Zayn was smiling at Niall encouragingly.

“Thanks Zaynie.” Niall smiled happily back at him. Zayn couldn’t explain how it made him feel to hear Niall say that nickname. He could almost feel the butterflies in his stomach going crazy. He really needed to pull himself together, it wasn’t possible to feel like that after two days.

 

They arrived at a small lake and they both got out of the car. Zayn led Niall to a small patch of grass and laid down, patting on the space next to him to signal Niall to do the same. He felt Niall’s body lying close to him, their arms touching. Zayn felt his skin tingle and he desperately wanted to connect his fingers with Niall’s skin, but he didn’t dare to make a move, he didn’t want to scare Niall off. So they just lay there, close to each other and watching the night sky.

 

“This is the only place in this town where you can see all of the stars perfectly. I’m often coming here to think about some things.”

“It’s beautiful. Thank you for taking me here Zayn, this must be a very personal place for you.”

“I wanted to show you something nice so you don’t have to go back home and say that there’s nothing beautiful here.” Zayn admitted.

“I wouldn’t have to say that anyway after I met you.”

 

Zayn didn’t dare to look at Niall, he wasn’t even sure if he really just said that. After a few moments of silence Zayn turned to Niall and looked at him. He was looking into the sky and his whole expression seemed relaxed and peaceful. It was beautiful and Zayn knew what he was going to draw next. Niall must’ve felt Zayn staring at him because he was looking at Zayn after a short time. He smiled at him lazily.

 

“I should probably go back to Louis’ now, I don’t want them missing me and I don’t want to be too tired tomorrow, if that’s alright with you.” Niall had a guilty look on his face but Zayn reassured him that it was alright, he was getting tired too and he needed to sleep a little bit before he had math first period. The drive back to Louis’ was mostly quiet but it was nice, no awkward silence involved.

 

When Zayn got home, he immediately fell into bed, not even bothering brushing his teeth or taking a shower. That had to wait until tomorrow. The last two days had been more exhausting than he had realized, with Niall keeping his thoughts and his actions in control. His last thought before he fell asleep was how beautiful the blond guy had looked in the moonlight.

 

***

 

Louis was back in school the next day, which meant that Niall was going to follow him around the whole day and not Zayn anymore. Zayn was happy that he at least had three out of seven classes together with Louis, therefore he got to see Niall almost half of the day, including lunch break. He still missed him a lot in the classes he had to spend alone, but in some of them he got to sit next to Harry and his exchange student, Josh, which made it more bearable. Talking to Harry wasn’t the same as talking to Niall, but Harry told him many stories of both of them and Zayn could see why they were such great friends, they seemed to have a lot of fun together.

Maybe it was kind of weird that his stomach flipped every time Niall such as looked at him, but the butterflies didn’t seem to stop fluttering around in his chest whenever Niall was close to him. Because of that, lunch break got a bit awkward. Zayn was sitting between Niall and Louis, on the other side of the table were Liam, Sophia, Harry and Josh, and Zayn’s heart felt like it was about to jump out of his chest and his stomach was currently on a rollercoaster. As he had already discovered the first day, Niall was not afraid of physical contact, which only increased his pulse every time Niall dropped his hand on his knee while he was laughing or rested his head on Zayn’s shoulder when he got tired. Sometimes it happened that Niall was talking to him while touching him and Zayn found it very hard to concentrate on what he was saying and respond in logical sentences. He was stuttering his way through an answer about his family, a subject he usually had no problem talking for hours about, but with Niall leaning into his side and his hand on his knee it was very hard to even remember his sister’s name. As he had finished his answer and Niall was turning his attention back to his food he felt a tap on his other shoulder and turning towards it, he saw Louis looking at him with furrowed brows.

 

“Are you alright bro? You seem a bit off, to be honest…”

“Yeah, no I’m alright, no worries. Just a bit lost in my own thoughts, you know how I am…” Zayn tried to talk his way out of this awkward situation but Louis was still looking at him with worry in his eyes, not really convinced that he was okay. Zayn tried to smile at him to convince him although he wasn’t sure if it worked, but Niall was leaning against him again and his attention was needed elsewhere. He could still talk to Louis later on.

Conversation flowed easily between all of them and it was nice to get to know all of their exchange students better, even though Zayn now preferred to listen instead of talking himself. Way too soon lunch break was over and everyone was headed their own way to get to their classes.

‘Was it weird to miss Niall already?’ Zayn thought to himself while he was walking to his physics class. But he quickly decided he wasn’t missing Niall, he had just enjoyed being in a group of people who laughed a lot and now it was just a little bit too quiet. It had nothing to do with Niall personally. Obviously. It just couldn’t be about him.

 

Even though he tried really hard to convince himself that he wasn’t feeling anything for Niall, he couldn’t stop thinking about him in his last two classes and on his way home. Niall’s glazing blue eyes and his shining smile just didn’t seem to disappear from his mind. That’s why he couldn’t stop himself from starting to sketch Niall’s eyes, his smile or his blond hair which framed his face with the rosy cheeks so perfectly, on every surface that was in his reach that afternoon. He might seem like a stalker if someone was to see all the little pictures of the small details of Niall’s face but right now he didn’t care.

He also couldn’t help the images of Niall caressing his body with his soft and gentle hands later as he lay in bed and tried to sleep. His imagination went crazy as he pictured Niall slowly stroking his thighs and his chest and pressing feather light kisses all over his body and the hand that wrapped itself around his hardening dick wasn’t his but Niall’s.

 

***

 

The week passed by in a blur of sunshine and laughter and before Zayn knew, it was Friday and the weekend meant he wasn’t going to see Niall for two whole days. But already Friday afternoon he heard his phone vibrating on his desk and looking at it he read:

 

_From: Louis Tomlinson_

_To: Zayn Malik_

_Niall and I are going to that haunted house today, u wanna join us?_

And without even thinking about it, he replied:

 

_From: Zayn Malik_

_To: Louis Tomlinson_

_I’m in. when and where do we meet?_

A couple of minutes later, Louis had written:

 

_From: Louis Tomlinson_

_To: Zayn Malik_

_8pm my place. Can u drive? My mum needs the car tonight :/_

_From: Zayn Malik_

_To: Louis Tomlinson_

_Alright, I‘ll be there._

When 7:30pm came around, Zayn found himself standing in front of his closet after his shower. What was he supposed to wear? What did one wear to go to a Haunted House, where it’d be mostly dark and you were basically about to piss yourself every other minute? He eventually settled for his usual tight black jeans, a thin red jumper and his leather jacket for later and managed to park his car outside of Louis’ house on time. He jumped out of his car and just as he got to the front door, one of Louis’ little sisters opened it excitedly and ran into his arms.

 

“Hey there Daisy! Haven’t seen you in a while, have I? How are you doing love? Is Louis nice to you?”

 

“I’m always nice to my sisters you idiot, thank you very much.” Louis’ voice came out of the kitchen on the left and Zayn looked up to see if he was coming his way but was greeted with Niall standing in the doorway, grinning down at him instead.

“Oh hi Niall, didn’t see you there at first! You alright?”

“Hey Zaynie! Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. Louis’ sisters love you, don’t they?” Niall was smiling gently at Daisy who was still clinging to Zayn’s leg.

“Yeah, they always have, must be because I know how to handle them, with having my own sisters and all, you know? I love these little girls here just as much as my own sisters and it’s probably inevitable to be loved by little girls if you play with them, I guess.” He laughed a little bit and grinned at Niall. He was glad that he wasn’t stuttering anymore, but his stomach was still doing somersaults every time he saw Niall.

“You’re obviously really good with kids then. It’s nice to see that there are at least some guys our age who don’t seem to hate children.” Niall said and he was still smiling so happily, it almost turned Zayn’s brain into mush again.

“Thanks!” Zayn said, blushing slightly.

“Stop flirting with my exchange student, Zayn! Let’s get going, I don’t wanna stand in line for ages!”

“I’m not…um I…” Zayn stammered, blushing furiously. He wasn’t flirting!

 

With one short look at Niall, he could see that the other boy was blushing just as much as him, but he didn’t know what that meant. Was he embarrassed that a guy was flirting with him or didn’t he want Louis to think they were flirting?

 

“Shut up and come on!” Louis said, rolling his eyes but Zayn knew exactly that it was to hide his affection towards them.

 

The car drive to the Haunted House started awkwardly. Neither Zayn nor Niall knew what to say anymore and they just hummed along to the radio quietly until suddenly Louis chimed in.

 

“Oh c’mon guys, you don’t have to act like I’m your mother who’s taking you to your first cinema date. I don’t give a fuck if you were or are flirting with each other, you’re old enough to decide what is best for both of you. And now stop acting weird and talk like normal people do!”

 

Zayn and Niall shared a quick glance at each other and burst out laughing. After that, the car ride was completely normal, conversation flowing easily just how it always had between them.

 

As they finally arrived at the Haunted House they got out of the car and walked to the entrance, where they had to wait for a while because they obviously weren’t the only people who wanted to visit a scary place like that with Halloween being close. Zayn noticed that Niall got more nervous with every passing minute, he started to bite his fingernails and constantly played with the zipper on his jacket.

 

“Niall, are you sure you wanna go in there?” Zayn asked curiously. He didn’t want to drag him in there if he was really afraid of it all.

“Yeah sure, it’ll be fun, right?” Niall smiled warily at him but tried his best to hide his nervousness. Zayn couldn’t do more than ask and if Niall was so sure about doing it, he wasn’t going to stop him. But he still kept an eye on him to see if his fiddling got worse.

 

The moment they got in Zayn felt Niall walking up really close to him and when they turned the first corner and the first loud noise came out of nowhere, Niall was clinging to Zayn’s back and tried to hide behind him. Zayn then decided it would be easier to actively protect him and he threw an arm across Niall’s shoulders and tugged him closer to him. Niall was cuddling up to him and put his arm around Zayn’s waist to get closer to him. That way the two boys were able to get through the whole Haunted House without further incidents of panic attacks or similar things, even though Niall was looking at the emergency exit longingly when they passed it. Louis had been in front of them the whole time, therefore he hadn’t been able to see them and when they got out of the building and Louis saw Zayn and Niall walking towards him arm in arm he just raised one eyebrow and asked curiously:

“What were you doing in there? You’re supposed to get a little bit scared and not snog each other’s faces off…”

Both of them were blushing again although they had no reason to.

“I only protected your exchange student from getting eaten by a monster.” Zayn answered smugly.

 

But he thought that Louis’ idea hadn’t been bad either. Apparently Niall was embarrassed of his fearful self now because he was hiding his face in Zayn’s shoulder and groaned silently. Zayn wasn’t opposed at all to Niall being even closer to him than before and again, he couldn’t help himself and he pressed a feather light kiss to Niall’s soft hair, hoping it was light enough to not get noticed by Niall himself. But Louis had seen it and his eyes grew wide and his eyebrows shot almost up to his hairline. He motioned for Zayn that they were going to talk later. Alone. Zayn had no choice as to nod and hope he would get out of that conversation alive and without being mortified for the rest of his life.

On the ride back home he found out that Niall had never in his life been in anything similar to a Haunted House and he immediately felt sorry for him because this one had been an especially scary one, even for Zayn, who had been to many of these. Being confronted with this one for the first time of ever being in a haunted house must be horrible and also convincing to never go into any of those ever again. But Niall seemed fine now and he didn’t seem like the scary things from earlier were still on his mind. When they arrived at Louis’ house, they got out of the car and Niall hugged him tightly, his usual way of saying goodbye, but it felt like he was hanging onto Zayn for longer than on the previous days. But maybe that was just Zayn’s wishful thinking. Niall was on his way to the house when he realized that Louis wasn’t following him, so he turned around and seemed like he wanted to wait there, but Louis said:

“You can go in there already, I’m coming in a few, just need to talk to Zayn for a sec.”

Niall nodded and waved one last time before turning around again and walking into the house. As soon as the door closed behind him, Louis was hammering one finger against Zayn’s chest.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were in love?? I thought we were best friends and we’d tell each other these kind of things!” He faked disappointment towards Zayn but he could see that some of that was real. Louis felt left out.

“I didn’t tell you because 1. You were sick for almost the whole week and left me alone with him, 2. I’m not in love! There was nothing to tell anyway.”

“Oh shut up Zayn, I know how you look at someone when you have a huge crush on them, which always leads to you falling in love with them! And you were looking at Niall like that every time I saw you staring at him and you kissed him on his head! That is indication enough, you don’t kiss your buddies on their heads, do you?” Louis wasn’t really angry at him, his eyes were full of adoration towards his best friend because he knew how much Zayn deserved to fall in love again, after he didn’t have a relationship or even a small crush on someone in ages.

“Yeah okay, maybe you’re right. But I thought it was just a small crush at first, it all happened so fast! I barely knew him for one day and I was already sketching him! You know that doesn’t happen often…I didn’t even get your face right until I knew you for almost a year!”

 

“You know, you sound like a really creepy stalker when you say things like that. I’m glad that I know you well enough to understand your weird artistic ass. But I just wanted to make sure that you know that I’ll always support you, no matter what. Even though I’m not quite sure how this thing with Niall is supposed to work out in the long run, he’s only here for 2 months, you know that. But I wish you all the best and you deserve to be happy Zayn. You’re still my best friend and I do care about you.”

 

“Oh now we’re getting sappy, huh?” Zayn teased Louis, but they both knew that he really appreciated Louis’ reassuring. Sometimes he needed to hear those things.

“Thanks Lou, I’ll see what I’ll do about it. I don’t even know if he’d be interested in a dude, not even speaking about me.”

“Trust me, if he’s into guys, he’ll be into you. There’s no way he wouldn’t see those cheekbones.” Louis was patting his cheek. “I’m gonna go inside now or Niall will think I stole you and ran away with you. We don’t want him thinking we’re together, do we?”

 

With those words Louis turned on his heels and went inside. Zayn drove home but as always, he’d rather be at Louis’. With Niall.

He then remembered what Niall had said the first day they met. The first thing was Niall telling him in the library that the description ‘hot’ would’ve been enough to find him and the second thing was that night when Niall had said that Zayn was one beautiful thing he would remember from this exchange. And suddenly Zayn wasn’t so sure anymore that Niall wasn’t interested in him, at least a little bit. Maybe he did think that Zayn was beautiful, but did that also mean he thought Zayn was nice? Did he feel more for Zayn than just platonic friendship? And did he cuddle up to all of his friends like he had today or was it just Zayn he wanted to be that close to? Maybe Zayn could ask Harry discreetly about it, he probably knew things like that about Niall. And maybe he would even ask Niall out to grab a coffee or something sometime. If he found the courage to do that.

While he was driving he heard his phone beeping in his pocket and parking outside his house, he looked at it and saw a text from Niall.

 

_From: Niall Horan <3_

_To: Zayn Malik_

_Thank you for earlier Zaynie xx it meant a lot to me that u cared, couldn’t have done it w/out you. Sleep well x_

After reading that text, Zayn went inside, smiling widely. He was glad that his family was already sleeping, he didn’t know how he should’ve explained the grin spreading on his face. Before falling into his bed, he replied:

 

_From: Zayn Malik_

_To: Niall Horan <3_

_Np, goodnight Nialler xx_

He tried to not overanalyze the ‘x’s in Niall’s text but he still hoped it meant just as much to Niall as it did to him.  

 

***

 

All Saturday long he didn’t hear from Louis or Niall and he guessed that they were on a family trip. But Sunday Louis called and said that his mother had told him to go trick or treating with his little sisters and Louis wanted Zayn and his sisters to tag along. Zayn had always been a sucker for those things on Halloween, it was fun for him to watch his little sisters gleefully knock on doors and collect as much candy they could carry. He had always liked dressing up too, it was nice to not always have to be the responsible adult all the time but to also be able to let the kid in himself show. That’s why he stood on Louis’ front porch once again but this time with his sisters in tow and dressed in a Hulk suit, which made him look a little bit broader than he actually was. But also a little bit sick because he had to paint his face green too, his sisters had insisted.

When the door opened he was greeted with a grinning Niall, dressed in a superman suit, which looked slightly too small because it clung to his chest and his stomach very tightly. ‘Great’, Zayn thought. This was going to be an interesting evening.

 

“Hey Zayn! You look great, very convincing!” Niall grinned at him and chuckled.

“Thanks Ni. You look great yourself. Meet my sisters, this little princess here is Safaa and this scary witch right next to me is Waliyha.”

“You both look amazing! Are you excited?” Niall asked the little girls and crouched down to be their height.

“Yes, can we go now? I don’t want to wait anymore!” Safaa whined. She had been asking the whole day long when they could finally leave. Niall laughed quietly.

“Just a few more minutes Saf, we need to wait on Daisy and Phoebe. You don’t want to go without them, do you?” Zayn asked gently. He knew how much he had hated waiting when he was her age.

 

Safaa pouted but didn’t ask again. They had only waited in the hallway for a few minutes, when Louis and his sisters came running down the stairs. Daisy was dressed in a warm bear costume, apparently she wanted to be Koda from Brother Bear, Phoebe was wearing a red cape and a cute little dress, she was Red Riding Hood and Louis looked more like a stripper with his cowboy hat and really tight jeans but he said he was supposed to be the guy from Toy Story. Niall and Zayn nearly toppled over from laughing when Louis explained that the costume had only been available for kids under 13 but he really wanted to have it. So he had to buy a kids costume and hope it would fit, surprisingly it was only a little bit too tight.

 

“You don’t even have the right to laugh at me Niall, with your too tight Superman suit!” Louis exclaimed jokingly.

“And whose fault is that again? Am I the one that is so small that no one else fits into my Halloween costumes? Nope, I guess that’s you.” Niall laughed, the Superman costume had been the biggest costume Louis owned.

“Well, I think it looks good on you anyway Ni.” Zayn declared and blushed. He hadn’t really wanted to say that out loud, but Niall just smiled at him and didn’t say anything else. They were now walking down the road and Niall ran up to the four girls to talk to them.

“Thanks for having my back bro. That’s what best friends are for.” Louis joked. Zayn just shrugged and watched Niall interact with the girls. He was really good with kids too.

“Stop the heart eyes Malik and talk to him!” Louis said and ran towards the others walking in front of them. Zayn was blushing again and was glad that his skin color would probably hide most of it. Niall turned around and saw Zayn walking by himself so he stopped walking and waited until Zayn had caught up with him. When Zayn was next to him, he looped his arm around Zayn’s waist and tugged himself into Zayn’s side, like he had done that previous Friday.

 

“So, the Hulk is your favorite superhero then?” Niall asked, curiosity visible in his glazing blue eyes.

“Yeah, he is and has always been. I even thought about getting a tattoo of him but then settled for a comic sign instead.” Zayn only then realized that Niall had never seen his tattoos, he had been wearing long sleeved shirts all week long due to the cold weather.

“You’ve got more tattoos than the ones on your hands?” Niall looked surprised but also really excited. “Can I see them?”

“Yeah, I’ll show them to you one day, but not now, I can’t really roll up the sleeves of this shirt that far.” Zayn explained and Niall’s excitement shrank but he still looked very happy to get to see these mysterious tattoos at least one day in the future.

“Cool! How many do you have?”

“I don’t really know, I lost count some time along the way…about 30 or something, I guess.” Zayn shrugged. He really wasn’t sure how many tattoos he had. And there were many more to come if you’d ask him. Niall looked genuinely impressed.

“Do you have any?” Zayn asked after Niall hadn’t said anything for a while and seemed lost in his thoughts.

“Oh no, I’m scared of needles, to be honest. I guess I’ll never get one but I think they look better on others anyway.” Niall smiled softly at him. Zayn’s heart was fluttering in his chest and he hoped Niall couldn’t feel it with his hand pressed below his ribcage on Zayn’s waist.

 

“Your skin is already beautiful enough without any permanent marks on it.” Zayn admitted shyly. He was testing the waters, if he wanted Niall to go out with him, he needed to know how he reacted to compliments at first. To his content, Niall was blushing but smiling brightly at him.

“I don’t know, it’s nothing special. Typically Irish I’d say. Easily blushing or sunburned with a lot of freckles.” Niall admitted.

“Don’t say that Niall. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful and very special.” Zayn was getting more courageous with every passing minute. Niall still hadn’t moved away from him so he took that as a good sign.

“See, now you’re making me blush Zaynie.” Niall was hiding his face behind one hand but leaned into Zayn’s chest even more.

“Do you want to go on a date with me Niall?” Zayn then blurted out, he couldn’t hold back anymore.

Niall then leaned in and pressed a light kiss to Zayn’s cheek. “I’d love to.”

 

Zayn could barely walk in a straight line after that, his knees were weak and his heart was beating faster than it ever did before. He was grinning and he didn’t even try to hide his happiness. Niall wanted to go out with him! He would’ve jumped from excitement if Niall wouldn’t have still been holding onto him. Louis then turned around, wondering where they were because the girls were running towards a door and he stood alone on the pavement. When he saw Zayn’s grin, he again raised one eyebrow at them.

 

“What’s got you so happy Zayn? Haven’t seen you smile like that since your 13th Birthday.”

“A gentleman never tells!” Zayn said teasingly.

“What? You fuckers are getting straight down to business?” Louis seemed genuinely surprised.

“He’s just kidding Louis. He only asked me for a date.” Niall then chimed in, wanting Louis to calm down again.

“And judging from the look on his face you said ‘yes’.”

“I did.” Niall was now smiling happily too.

“Oh god, you’re already disgustingly cute and it didn’t even happen anything yet between the two of you!” Louis said exasperated. “Where is this supposed to go?” But the smile on his face was enough to know that he was happy for the two of them.

 

The girls soon got tired and they had collected enough candy to feed them for the next ten years, so the boys decided it was time to bring them back home. Saying goodbye to Niall wasn’t Zayn’s favorite part of the evening but he knew he would see the other boy in school the next morning, so they managed. Niall hugged him as usual, but this time he also pressed a soft kiss to the crook of his neck and whispered:

“Goodnight Zaynie, I can’t wait to see you again.”

 

Zayn couldn’t do anything than to smile at him, wave one last time and drive away with his sisters in the backseat. He was in a sort of trance the whole evening after that. Niall took away all his capabilities to think and talk about anything else but the blond boy himself. Again, he fell asleep with thoughts of Niall wandering through his mind.

 

***

The next morning, Zayn got up with a smile on his face and for the first time in his life he couldn’t wait to get to school. He was so excited to see Niall again, not much time had passed since the last night but Zayn had already started missing him. He got so used to having the blond boy around him all the time that everything just seemed a bit too quiet when he wasn’t there.

When Zayn arrived at school he was looking for blond hair bopping around the hall but he was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t find Louis either and Zayn was slowly starting to worry. Where were the two of them? Had anything happened to them? But just before the last bell for the first period rang, Zayn saw them running towards him.

 

“I’m so sorry Zayn, I overslept. I can’t believe this happened to me, it usually only happens at home. But apparently I already feel so comfortable around here that my sleeping habits catch up with me again.” Niall was smiling ruefully at Zayn, it was obvious that he was ashamed of being the reason for them coming in late.

“I’m just glad you made it here! I was starting to worry…” Zayn said and hooked one arm around Niall’s shoulders, walking towards their classroom. “Hi Lou!” He added.

“Thanks for the ecstatic greeting.” Louis grumbled but he wasn’t being serious.

 

“So Zayn, when do you wanna go on that date you promised me?” Niall asked at lunch.

“Oh umm…I don’t really know. How about tonight?” Zayn asked. He hadn’t even thought about the exact day, still overwhelmed with the fact that Niall had even said yes. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one that lives in this town, aren’t you?” Niall laughed.

“Uh yeah, sure. How about you just come over to my house and we watch some movie? I’d take you to the movies but I don’t think there’s anything good on right now.” Zayn knew that this was the worst date idea ever but he couldn’t come up with another one that quickly.

 

“I’d love to!” Niall replied happily and hugged him tightly. Maybe the idea wasn’t that bad at all.

 

***

 

At home, Zayn cursed himself for ever asking Niall out on a date. What did he even think in the first place? How was he supposed to behave? He’s never been alone with Niall before. What if they didn’t find things to talk about? It would be so awkward! And on top of all of that, he invited him to his house! He had to clean his room, stack away all the embarrassing pictures of baby him, he had to organize food and drinks, what did Niall even like?

 

So basically, Zayn was completely freaking out the whole afternoon through. When his mum got home at 5pm, he was currently searching the kitchen for snacks he could take to his room.

 

“Hi Sweetie!” His mum greeted him. “What are you doing? Expecting any guests today?”

“Hi Mum. Uh, actually yeah, I am. Niall is coming over later, we want to watch a movie or something.”

“Niall?” His mum looked confused. “Isn’t that Louis’ exchange student you told me about?”

“Yeah, that’s him. We have a date, to be honest.” Zayn was blushing. He’d never had a date before, at least not one his mum knew about.

Her eyes met his and she carefully started to speak. “Zayn, you know he’s not here for a very long time, do you? I don’t want you to make things harder for yourself.”

 

Zayn knew all too well that Niall was leaving his country in 41 days, not that he was counting or anything. But he was already in too deep to protect himself from getting hurt.

 

“Yeah, I know Mum.” He smiled sadly at her and she seemed to understand, squeezing his hand lightly and leaving the kitchen.

 

At 7 pm he heard a knock on his front door and he was slightly panicking again. He stood in the kitchen and rubbed his hands over his face, trying to calm down. It helped very little but he had to open the door for Niall anyway. The second he saw Niall standing on his front porch, fiddling with his shirtsleeves, he immediately calmed down, somehow the Irish boy had that effect on him. He moved forward to wrap the boy up in a hug to be the first to do it at least this one time. While they were hugging he spotted Louis who was standing at his car door, apparently he drove Niall to his house, which made sense, considering that Niall wasn't allowed to drive on his own in the US. His best friend was smirking at him knowingly.

 

“Have fun tonight boys, I'll expect to see you at school tomorrow!” Louis shouted, waved at them and got into his car to drive away.

“So you're staying overnight? I didn't know that yet.” Zayn asked surprised.

“Louis thinks so obviously but I had no idea about it either.” Niall laughed and Zayn thought again that he was looking at the sun.

“I mean, you can of course but if you'd feel more comfortable with it I could also drive you to Louis’ later.”

“Okay, thank you so much Zaynie. I'll think we’ll decide it spontaneously.”

“Yeah sure.” Zayn said and took Niall’s hand to pull him inside his house.

"So, I thought we could go upstairs to my room and watch a movie or something, because my family is downstairs in the living room. If you don't mind, that is.” Zayn got nervous again. What if Niall didn't feel comfortable going to his room? But before he was able to really think about the other options they had, Niall was running up the stairs and yelled for him to follow behind.

Zayn ran up the stairs to catch up with Niall and found him standing in the middle of the hallway, adorably confused because he had just realized that he didn't know which room was Zayn's.

Zayn took his hand again and led him to the back of the hallway, his room was the last one. When he opened the door he heard a gasp beside him and looked at Niall. The blond boy was staring at his walls which were covered in paint. Zayn had convinced his mother that he could spray paint his walls.

"This is so sick!" Niall exclaimed. "Who did that?"

Zayn felt his face go hot. "Um actually, I did it myself. Took some effort to convince my mom though." He was smiling shyly.

"Wow Zayn, this is absolutely incredible! I didn't know you were that talented!"

"Yeah, we don't know that much about each other yet, do we?" Zayn sat down on his bed and patted the space next to him, to show Niall that he should sit down. He grabbed his laptop to start searching for a movie they could watch.

"What kind of movies do you even like, Niall?"

"To be honest, I like most types of movies. But I'm always a sucker for Disney." Niall was blushing again and Zayn realized that it was really cute.

"Well, what a great coincidence, I happen to absolutely love Disney. How about one of the classics, The Lion King?" This was not only his favorite Disney movie of all time but he also hoped that Niall would cuddle up to him during the sad scenes.

When he had set up the movie and sat down again, his hopes were proven right and even better. Niall immediately sat closer to him and put his head on Zayn's shoulder but Zayn did not complain at all. He even thought he saw some tears at some point but he didn't mention it because he didn't want to make Niall feel uncomfortable. When the end credits rolled down they were both half asleep and Zayn put his laptop on the nightstand and lay down properly, tugging Niall along with him. They silently decided that Niall would stay the night because they were both too tired to get up again. They quickly fell asleep and Zayn did not want to think about why his heart was fluttering like a colorful butterfly.

 

***

 

Zayn woke up with a warm body pressed against his chest and his arm slung across the other person. He couldn't help himself but to start smiling, it was really nice waking up to blonde hair, soft skin and blue eyes. He quickly pressed a kiss to Niall's cheeks and got up to take a shower. While he was undressing in the bathroom, he realized that he didn’t bring new clothes for afterwards and he quickly debated if he should go back to his room and grab some clothes or if he should go back to his room in just a towel later and hope that it wasn’t going to be uncomfortable for Niall. Seeing that he was already naked and didn’t really feel like dressing again to walk back to his room, he decided that a towel would have to be enough.

Returning to his room in only his towel turned out to be very embarrassing because he met his mother in the hallway the second Niall opened his bedroom door, only dressed in loose sweatpants and no shirt. His mum’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline but she just smiled.

 

“Good Morning boys! I just wanted to see if you were awake to get to school on time.”

 

Niall was beat red and the flush went all the way down to his chest. It made Zayn think about how he would look like if the flush was created by him. Not a good time to think about that though, so he focused on Niall’s eyes again. They always calmed him.

 

“Good Morning Mrs. Malik! I didn’t get to introduce myself last night, I’m sorry. It’s nice to meet you.” Niall finally managed to say, still blushing furiously.

“Oh, call me Trisha, love! And that’s not a problem, Zayn obviously didn’t want to share you with us.” His mum just smiled brightly and turned towards the stairs. “Breakfast is ready for you, I’m heading out soon. It was nice to finally meet you in person Niall.”

 

Zayn and Niall returned to Zayn's room.

 

“What did she mean with ‘finally’ meeting me?” Niall grinned cheekily.

“I may have mentioned you once or twice.” Zayn smiled shyly. He still wasn’t sure how much he could tell Niall without making him feel pressured or uncomfortable.

Niall just laughed and left the room to go to the bathroom. Zayn was able to get dressed without further embarrassment and he was very happy about that.

 

***

 

When they got to school an hour later, Louis was already awaiting them at his locker.

 

“There they finally are, my two lovebirds!” He exclaimed, looking very excited.

Both of them just smiled and Zayn took his arm away from where it had rested on Niall’s shoulders to open his own locker. Niall had just seen Harry walking towards them so he was occupied other ways to not see the way Louis got closer to Zayn, made kissy noises and when Zayn didn’t react, asked whether they had kissed or not.

 

“No, we haven’t. I don’t know why, it just never was the right time for it and then we fell asleep. It was nice.” He smiled, thinking about the last night.

“But didn’t you want to kiss him? Maybe he thinks that you’re not interested in him anymore!” Louis seemed shocked, he obviously had hoped that they would kiss.

"Do you think he thinks that? Oh shit, I didn’t think about that. Shit, shit, shit, what am I supposed to do Louis?” Zayn was slightly freaking out, what if Niall really thought he wasn’t interested and he didn’t want to be friends with him anymore?

“Kiss him, you idiot! It’s not that hard, you know.” Louis patted his shoulder lightly. It was nice to have his best friend encouraging him.

Zayn turned around and looked for Niall. He saw him standing next to Harry at the other side of the hallway, a serious look on his face. And in that moment, Zayn lost control over his body and didn’t really realize anything at all anymore, he just knew that he wanted to see Niall’s smile again. The next thing he knew, he stood in front of Niall, too close to be unintentional. His surroundings blurred out completely and all he could see were the eyes he had dreamed of for the past weeks. He slowly put his hands on each side of Niall’s head, leaned forward and pressed his lips against Niall’s soft ones.

Next to him he heard someone inhaling sharply and he pulled back. He looked at Harry who stared wide-eyed and mouth gaping at them but then started whooping, together with Louis, who was apparently standing behind him. Zayn only then looked back at Niall, who was staring at him with a mixture of shock and incredulousness. But then a smile spread across his features and Zayn was looking at everything he had always wanted since he first saw the beautiful face of the Irish boy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry that this took so long, but life and school were keeping me quite busy.  
> this isn't as long as the last one but i hope it's still okay.  
> also, please don't pin me down on the facts mentioned in this chapter, i have only once been to the US and have lived in this part for two weeks. it was three years ago, so i'm sorry if anything is wrong, i might have forgotten about it.  
> i promise the next chapter will be up more quickly!! and i'm pretty sure there are only going to be 3 chapters.  
> i hope you enjoy this!

The day that followed was probably the happiest day Zayn’s had in a long time. He usually wasn’t a guy for much PDA, but he was able to sneak in a few kisses when no one was watching them during lunch or in the hallway when they had to go separate ways. But even being able to hold Niall’s hand in public was more than he had ever dared to wish for, but somehow nobody in their school seemed to care about the two lovebirds. When he got home that afternoon, after he was able to get one last proper kiss from Niall in a small corner in one of the hallways, Zayn felt as if he was floating on fluffy clouds and he wouldn’t have to worry about anything in his life ever again.

But in the back of his mind was the constant reminder imprinted, that Niall was going to leave in 2 months and was going to live 8 hours away from him, across a huge ocean. But for the first few days, Zayn was able to ban the thought of Niall leaving him from his thoughts and only thought about the good things the boy was giving him. He wondered how he got so lucky, how a moody guy with a bad boy image like him had the luck to be in love with an actual ray of sunshine who everyone loved.

And yes, there was no denying it anymore at this point. Zayn was in love with Niall. He just wasn’t sure yet, if he should tell him about it or stay silent and safe the both of them the heartbreak that would be sure to follow. Or himself the embarrassment if Niall wasn’t feeling the same.

For now, all he wanted to do was to enjoy the time he could spend with Niall and don’t think about the future.

The second he walked into the door of his home he saw his mum standing in the kitchen and he grinned brightly at her and went to kiss her on the cheek to say hello. Not being used to seeing him this happy after school, his mum immediately asked him what had happened that made him that happy.

“I kissed Niall, Mum. I’m so happy because he’s so great? And he likes me? And I don’t even deserve him because he’s just so good.” He sighed. He still couldn’t fully wrap his head around the fact that he and Niall were officially dating.

“I’m happy for you Zayn. But I want you to be careful, you know. And don’t ever say anything like that again in front of your mother, I think you deserve the world and even more, so of course you deserve Niall if he is the sun to you!” She hugged him tightly. “I love you Zayn, I’m so glad you found someone.”

“Okay, shut up mum, I’m gonna cry if you keep talking like that. Love you too.”

After a bit of procrastinating and thinking even more about Niall, Zayn finally got around to doing his homework he had abandoned for the last two weeks. After he had finished that, his phone rang.

“Hey, I just wanted to hear your voice.” Came Niall’s soft voice through the speakers.

“Hi Babe.” Zayn said, smiling happily. “You missing me already?” He asked jokingly.

“Yeah, to be honest, I really kinda miss you.” Niall answered shyly.

“I actually do miss you too. How’s your family, have you spoken to them since you’ve been away from home? Tell me about them.” Zayn suggested. He wanted to learn as much as possible about Niall.

Two hours of speaking on the phone later, Zayn felt like he knew everything about Niall’s family and his home back in Ireland. He noticed that Niall absolutely loved his Irish roots and his hometown, but also that the boy wanted to discover other parts of England and the whole world. With each word that came from Niall’s mouth Zayn adored him even more and grew fonder of him. Zayn told Niall about his family and why they had to move to Atlanta and how he had been living before he came to the US. They got along so well and even the times when no one said a word didn’t feel awkward, they simply enjoyed listening to the other’s breathing.

That night, Zayn dreamt about travelling the world with Niall and living in a small cottage somewhere in Ireland when they both were old. He couldn’t wait to have that in real life and he desperately wished for it all to happen how he had imagined it.

 

***

 

Zayn dropped the folder loudly between Niall and Louis on the lunch table.

“Hey babe!” Zayn said, kissed Niall on the cheek and dropped down on the chair next to him.

“So, what’s this?” Louis asked curiously, eyeing the folder.

“We’re going on a trip!” Zayn explained happily.

“Who’s going? Is it a school trip?” Louis looked confused.

“No you idiot, I never go on school trips, if you haven’t noticed that yet. The seven of us are going, Liam, Sophia, Harry, Josh, you two and me.”

“Where are we going though? And who planned that?” Louis furrowed his brows. He still didn’t really know what was going on.

“We’re going to Savannah, we want to show our lovely exchange students the lovely coast of Georgia.”

“Oh, we’re going to the sea?” Niall asked excitedly.

“Yes babe, it’s gorgeous down there and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun with the others.” Zayn pecked Niall on the lips. Just because he could. When he pulled back, he saw Louis rolling his eyes but also trying to hide his smile in his sandwich, so he didn’t really care.

“When are we leaving?” Niall asked, almost jumping up and down in his excitement.

“This weekend, we’re driving down there Friday afternoon so that we have the whole Saturday and half of the Sunday. We still need to decide who’s driving but that’s not going to be hard, we’re only driving 4 hours, I think everyone of us can handle that. And we’re sleeping in a small hostel if that’s alright with you, I didn’t want to make the trip overly expensive.”

“So you organized all of that? Thanks for doing that bro, it’s a great idea.” Louis said, smiling at him appreciatively.

“No problem. When you get home today you should better get packing, it’s Wednesday already! Take your swim trunks with you, maybe we’re going to go swimming!” Zayn grinned. He wasn’t doing that, that was for sure.

“Wait, so you’re going swimming too? I thought you weren’t even ab…” Louis started.

“No, I’m not. You know that. But maybe you want to.” Zayn cut him off.

Niall looked confused from one boy to the other. “What’s wrong? What did Louis want to say?”

“Not that important.” Louis grumbled, being the great friend he always was.

“He wanted to mention that I am not able to swim.” Zayn explained. Where was the point in keeping secrets from Niall, if the boy had already taken control over him anyway? He was going to find out eventually.

“Are you serious?” Niall asked. He looked genuinely surprised and not like he was going to make fun of him. Zayn was really glad for that.

“Yes, I am. I just never learned it and I’m quite afraid of waters I don’t have control over too, so I don’t really feel like learning it either.” Zayn admitted.

“Oh okay. I don’t have to go swimming if you’re not. I don’t want you to get bored.” Niall immediately proposed.

“No really, it’s fine! I’m good on my own, it’s fun watching people in the water.” Zayn assured him.

“If you say so.” Niall gave in.

“Yes, trust me babe. We’ll see if the weather is even good enough for that.”

“Um…Zaynie, you know that I am from Ireland, right? I’m used to the water being close to freezing.” Niall laughed. Zayn and Louis chimed in and in that moment the bell rang, classes were beginning soon.

Niall and Zayn exchanged one last kiss and went to class. Zayn couldn’t wait until it was finally Friday.

 

***

 

After one and a half days of packing and organizing, the seven young boys and girls found themselves in the minivan of Josh’s father, who had, after a lot of convincing, allowed them to take his car to the coast. With that, they didn’t need to take two cars and were able to save money and arguments with their parents on who was going to have to miss their car, because neither of them had their own one.

Josh and Sophia were sitting in the front row, just because Sophia was the only girl and Josh was driving. Liam, Louis and Harry were seated in the middle, whereas Liam was mostly chatting with Sophia and Louis and Liam were turned to the back where Niall and Zayn were sitting.

The whole drive through, the car was filled with laughter and music, all of them enjoying each other’s company and being happy to get away from home for the weekend.

 

“So, we’re all sleeping in one dormitory, except Sophia, obviously. You’re sleeping in the women’s dormitory.” Zayn announced when they arrived at their hostel. “It was the cheapest way to spend the weekend and I thought it would be okay for 2 nights.”

“That’s perfect, Zaynie baby.” Niall said and tugged himself into Zayn’s side.

 

They took a walk around town that night and looked at the beautiful lights that were hung everywhere and enjoyed the noises of a coastal town. It was nice weather, not too cold but a nice breeze to cool down the heated air of the day, and the sky was clear, so that they were able to see some stars.

“Tonight kinda reminds me of the first night we spent together on that secret place of yours.” Niall whispered into Zayn's ear and he immediately got goosebumps trailing down his arms and back.

“There's nothing that could beat this night though. You called me beautiful, that was the best thing that has ever happened to me up until then.” Zayn admitted.

“Why not up until now?” Niall asked curiously.

“Because everything you've done since then was even better. You've agreed to a date with me. You've slept at my house. You said you wanted to be my boyfriend. You kissed me?” Zayn could list a thousand more things Niall's done to beat him calling Zayn beautiful but he had to stop himself at some point.

“So, boyfriend then?” Niall smirked.

“Oh shit. We haven't officially talked about it, I'm so stupid, I just assumed you were. Oh my god, I'm so sorry, it's fine if you don't want to be my boyfriend and stuff…” And again, Zayn was freaking out because he thought he’d gone too far.

“Zayn, calm down, I'd love to be your official boyfriend and for you to be mine. I actually assumed we were boyfriends too, I just wanted to tease you a little because we've never said it out loud.” Niall giggled. “I'm sorry, I should've known that you would react like that.”

“It's fine Niall, I always overreact, don't worry babe.” To emphasize what he was saying he pressed a kiss to the tip of Niall's nose. Niall then turned his head upwards and they kissed properly, out on the open streets of Savannah.

“Ugh, would you look at them.” They heard a voice behind them. “Why are you so disgusting?” It was Louis. Of course it was.

“Yes, they are disgusting, but disgustingly cute.” Harry said and they were all laughing.

Zayn was able to forget everything else around them and only focused on his friends in that moment. He was unbelievably happy right then. And just because he wanted to, he kissed Niall again.

 

It slowly got colder and they decided to go back to the hostel, they wanted to go to bed quite early this day so that they could get up easily the next morning to discover the city. They had a lot planned for the weekend and they shouldn’t be too tired for that. When they lay in bed that evening, Niall and Zayn were lying in beds opposite to each other. Before they fell asleep, they were staring into each other’s eyes and didn’t say a word to avoid keeping the others from sleeping. It would seem creepy if you actually thought about it, but in that moment none of the two boys did care at all. Zayn saw how Niall slowly fell asleep and shortly after he had closed his eyes, Zayn whispered the words ‘I love you’ into the room, hoping no one heard him.

 

***

 

The next morning they got up at 8am. Way too early if you asked Zayn, but when he thought about the things he had planned out for this day it was manageable.

The first point on the to-do-list was a dolphin watching tour.

“I hope you’re not seasick because we’re going on a boat in approximately one hour!” Zayn announced while they were having breakfast.

“I’m not sure to be honest.” Harry said. “I’m more comfortable on unmoving ground but I guess I’ll be okay.”

“But that’s just because he already stumbles through his life like he’s constantly drunk on normal ground, he’s just afraid to fall off the boat.” Niall added, to the amusement of everyone else.

“We’ll tie you to the boat if you’re too afraid.” Louis said. “Why are we going on a boat though? Anything special?”

“It’s a dolphin watching tour!” Zayn said excitedly.

“Wait, there are dolphins at this coast?” Sophia asked surprised.

“Yeah, quite many, I heard.” Liam explained. Of course he knew, he knew way more than Zayn did about this country or even the state they were living in.

They were all excited for this tour because most of them hadn’t seen a dolphin swimming around outside of an Aquarium ever before. The weather looked promising, only a few feathery clouds were among the blue sky and there was barely any wind. As barely as it could be on the coast of an ocean.

They had to take the bus to the harbor where the boat would be starting off because they didn’t really feel like dealing with the traffic when they also didn’t really know where to go, but the bus drive wasn’t very long and they got to see a bit of the city.

The boat took off towards the open sea and the wind got heavier. None of them had expected it to get this cold with the sun shining down on them, but the wind was icy. Zayn wrapped his arms around Niall because Zayn was wearing his heavy leather jacket which protected him from most of the wind, but Niall was only wearing a thin jumper. Niall cuddled close to him and slung his arms around Zayn’s back, underneath the jacket, to keep him warm.

“Your hands are icy!” He exclaimed, but not that he really minded at all with Niall being pressed up against him. Niall just giggled happily, knowing exactly that Zayn didn’t want him to let go.

The captain of the boat then announced over the speakers that he was going to slow down because they were slowly approaching the area in which the dolphins lived. They all got closer to the railing to see when the first dolphins were coming out of the water. Harry took a camera out of his backpack and with the wind in his curly hair and the big camera in front of his face he looked really artsy. Zayn wanted to draw him like that but because Niall was still holding onto him, he resisted the urge to take out his sketchpad and shut off the world around him and the object he was drawing.

Niall was watching him intently, trying to find out what he was thinking, but Zayn was enjoying the sounds of the water splashing against the boat and the soft roar of the motor so much that he would explain it to him later. He settled on pressing a feathery light kiss to Niall’s lips, who’s eyes were immediately closing and he was tugging him down to deepen the kiss, but Zayn drew back.

“Don’t you want to see the dolphins?” He asked cockily, smirking down on Niall.

“Right now I just want to kiss you, idiot.” Niall responded and pulled him down by his collar. Their lips met in a soft kiss, their mouths tasting like the salty air and hints of coffee. It was perfect, Niall thought.

They were torn apart abruptly by Josh’s loud voice right next to them.

“There is one!” He shouted, pointing towards the sea. Zayn followed the direction of his finger and saw a grey tail splashing into the water. He heard the shutter of Harry’s camera going off multiple times and all of them were now paying close attention to the surface of the slightly moving water.

And suddenly there were four dolphins, jumping out of the water one after another, and the captain announced that it was a family of father, mother and two children. They were apparently seen very often on this boat trip and loved to show off their skills in the water. They were able to watch the dolphins racing each other and playing games and it seemed like they were trained to do it, but the captain swore that they were in their natural environment and no human had ever worked with them.

“I’ve never seen animals act this way. And they’re so graceful while doing all of this.” Niall mumbled into Zayn’s neck. He was still cuddled close to Zayn to keep himself warm.

“Yeah, they are beautiful.” Zayn agreed and then they were staring silently into the water, trying to catch as much of the show as possible.

Too soon all of it was over and the boat was moving back towards the harbor. Harry had took approximately 500 pictures and they were all very cold afterwards, but it had been worth it. They decided to go back to the town center and find a small café or something like that. At least a McDonald’s if nothing else was to be found.

But they were lucky and found a cute and tiny café in a small street where they all sat around one table and drank hot chocolate or coffee to warm their icy fingers on and to heat up from the inside.

“So, what’s on the schedule next?” Liam asked when they all had gone back to their normal body temperature. It was unusual to be that cold this early in the year, especially because it had still been really warm the day before. Maybe it was just the open sea that made the wind seem much colder.

“A historic carriage tour! And please don’t tell me that one of you is afraid of horses!” Zayn joked.

“They’re a bit big, but I guess we’ll manage, as they’re only in front of the carriage and I don’t have to ride them.” Josh responded.

 

Zayn had booked a small carriage for the seven of them because he didn’t want many other tourists to be with them on the tour. They probably would have quickly been annoyed by the six rowdy boys. Sophia usually wasn’t that loud, she mostly watched Liam fondly. Zayn didn’t really know what was going on between them, he had never seen them kiss but he saw Liam putting his arms around her shoulders a few times. But he thought it was their business and Liam would tell him about it when the right time came around.

It was a little bit of a tight squeeze for them even though none of them were really broad. But they managed quite well, Niall was almost sitting on Zayn’s lap but as always, he didn’t mind one bit.

When the tour started they drove along the cobbled streets of the older parts of the town and got to see beautiful churches and houses that used to be huge mansions of the rich. The tour guide told them bits about Savannah’s history and the scandalous things that used to happen in these streets. It was just as much fun as it was interesting and they all enjoyed the afternoon sun that was now warm again. Zayn was really happy that his friends seemed to like the things he had planned out for them and he was really content with everything that had happened up until that moment. And he expected the weekend to continue this happily.

The day ended with them grabbing something to eat at a small sandwich place and falling into bed tiredly. The marine air was exhausting.

 

***

 

The next morning, the boys and Sophia visited the near located, abandoned fort that had been used in the 19th century during the civil war.

While the others took funny pictures with the canons or nice pictures with the sea in the background, Zayn had realized that Niall wasn’t with them anymore after a while. So he went to search for him and after a couple of minutes he found him crouched into a dark corner in the back of the fort.

Slowly approaching him, Zayn suddenly noticed that the boy was crying and with two steps, Zayn was beside him, getting down on his knees.

“Babe, what happened?” He asked in shock. Everything had been fine just a few minutes ago!

“My grandma…she’s gone!” Niall stuttered, interrupted by sobs. It was heartbreaking to see him like this.

“What happened? What do you mean, she’s gone?” Zayn asked. He had to, he had no idea what Niall was talking about.

“My mum just called me. She passed away last night. And I couldn’t even say goodbye!” A sob broke through the air, Niall was hugging his knees to his chest, like he was trying to hold himself in one piece. Zayn was completely helpless, he didn’t know what to do in situations like this. But he sat down next to Niall and pulled the boy to his chest, hugging him tightly and murmuring soft nonsense into his hair.

“She said I have to come home as soon as possible. She didn’t want to call me at first because she didn’t want to ruin my experience here, but I’m glad she did. I want to be there for her funeral. The next flight is on Tuesday.” Niall whispered when his crying had calmed down to soft sniffling. Zayn wasn’t sure if he understood Niall correctly, he couldn’t really have said that. There was no way Niall had to leave, they still had 5 weeks together! But when Niall stayed silent, Zayn knew that he had heard right. Niall was leaving in two days.

And he might never see him again.

 

“Either you just sucked his dick and it was really bad or…”

“Shut up Louis.” Zayn hissed when they got back to the other boys. This was not the time for jokes. Niall had red rimmed eyes and his whole face was blotchy red.

“My grandma just passed away. I have to go home on Tuesday.” Niall said, not looking at any of them. Hearing him say those words again made Zayn’s insides twist painfully. He still didn’t want to believe it. Louis’ eyes widened, he stared at Niall in shock and then at Zayn. Zayn just shook his head, signaling that he didn’t want to talk about it because he couldn’t without probably starting to cry right now and he had to stay strong. It was hard enough for Niall anyway, he didn’t need a crying boyfriend as well. But would they stay boyfriends when they were that far away from each other? Zayn couldn’t think about it, his heart was aching too much.

They all came closer and cuddled Niall in a big group hug until he was slightly smiling again. He held onto Harry for a little longer and Zayn couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy he felt at the sight, but Niall’s behavior was understandable, Harry had been his best friend for the past year.

This wasn’t the time to be jealous though, right now it was only about Niall and his feelings. So Zayn tried to ignore the jealousy but he still was internally grinning when Niall let go of Harry and came over to Zayn to take his hand in his and cuddle close to him. At least that meant they were still okay and not yet torn apart because of Niall leaving.

Zayn decided then and there that he didn’t want to worry about all of this anymore and that he would make the most out of their time together. He’d think about Niall leaving when they were stood at the airport together.

Surprisingly, they were able to enjoy the last hours of the day even though the events of the morning had been this sad. But they passed on action this afternoon and just calmly sat on the beach and watched the other tourists running in and out of the water. There was also a beautiful old pier they walked down and took some pictures on, to remember their time together.

Way too soon they had to get their suitcases to drive back home. It was sad to leave the coast behind, along with the memories and the possibility to forget everything else around them, but life was calling them back to reality.

 

***

 

Niall wasn’t in school on Monday. When Zayn saw Louis strolling towards him without the bubbly blond by his side, Zayn already knew that he wasn’t going to see Niall in school that day, but when Louis confirmed it, it was still like a punch in the guts.

“He’s staying at home to collect his stuff and try to get everything back into his suitcase. But he told me to tell you that you should come over later. I guess he wants to see you one last time.” Louis smiled sadly at him and Zayn tried to smile back, but his lips started quivering and his face crumpled. He couldn’t hold back the silent sob that was escaping his throat and the tears that were streaming down his face.

Louis just moved forward and wrapped him up in a big hug, without trying to tell him that everything was going to be alright, because he just didn’t know. But that’s why Louis was Zayn’s best friend, they didn’t always need words to know what the other needed in that moment. Quickly Zayn regained his self-control but he kept close to Louis, he was always there to support him and to put a soothing hand on his shoulder when his thoughts spiraled down into a dark hole again.

 

After school had ended, Zayn went over to Louis’ house with mixed feelings. On first hand, he was excited to see Niall again, after he hadn’t been in school this day, but on the other hand, he was afraid of what their goodbye might look like and he was sad that Niall was actually leaving.

But when Niall opened the door and pulled him in for a hug, all his worries were momentarily forgotten. He breathed in deeply, he wanted to be able to remember Niall’s smell when he left.

The whole afternoon, they avoided talking about their relationship and how or if it would continue. Zayn, Niall and Louis hung out in the living room, with Niall and Zayn cuddled close together on one couch and Louis on the couch standing opposite to them. They played Fifa and watched some stupid shows on TV but mostly they just talked. About anything and everything, it didn’t really matter, it was just important to them that they spent time together.

“Hey boys!” Louis’ mum came into the room shortly after 10pm. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Zayn, you either should go soon or you sleep here, but it’s getting quite late and the girls always wake up when they hear someone leaving the house late at night. Not that I want to throw you out or something, you know you’re always welcome here.” She smiled at Zayn.

“Yeah, I know Jo, thanks.” Zayn smiled back at her, she was like a second mum to him. After she had left the room, Zayn turned back to Louis and Niall.

“Would it be alright if I stayed over night?” He asked shyly. “And maybe come to the airport with you tomorrow morning?”

“But don’t you have to go to school?” Niall asked, his brows furrowed. It was cute to see him worried about Zayn.

“That can wait, no one’s gonna take any harm if I stay away for one day.” Zayn responded quickly. As if he was going to be able to concentrate on classes tomorrow anyway.

“Yeah, sure you can stay Zayn.” Louis said. “I guess you prefer to stay in Niall’s room and not sleep on my bedroom floor?”

“That would be very generous of you, if you allowed me to not sleep next to you for once.” Zayn grinned. It was so easy to be happy around Louis.

“I’m glad you’re staying.” Niall whispered, his lips close to Zayn’s neck, he could feel Niall’s breath fanning over the sensitive skin there.

“I am, too.” Zayn whispered back and pressed a kiss so Niall’s forehead.

“Okay, I’m going to my room if you continue like that.” Louis said, pretending to get sick. “No, you know I love you both and that you’re awfully cute together, but we should sleep soon, we have to get up early tomorrow.” He added in a more serious voice.

“Yeah, that’s true. Sleep well, love you bro.” Zayn said, waving goodbye to Louis. Louis just grinned and shook his head slightly.

“Yeah, you too.” He laughed and went upstairs.

Niall immediately cuddled even closer to Zayn and looked up at him with wide ocean blue eyes.

“I’m going to miss you like crazy, you know.” He said and his eyes looked sad, Zayn could see tears welling up in them.

“I know. And I’ll miss you more than anything. But let’s stop talking about that, we still have one night together.”

Niall waggled his eyebrows and Zayn realized just then that it sounded more sexual than he had wanted it to.

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He laughed. “But I’m not opposed to that either.” He clarified, although he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to start anything like that, when he didn’t even know if he was going to see Niall ever again. But then again, if he wasn’t going to see him again, he had to take the chance, didn’t he?

Niall apparently thought so too and leapt forward to kiss him harshly. His tongue traced along Zayn’s bottom lip and soon they were full on snogging on Louis’ couch, Zayn on his back and Niall half on top of him. When Zayn’s pants slowly started to feel too tight, he pressed a hand to Niall’s chest and pushed him back a bit.

“We should probably not do this here.” He said breathlessly.

“Yeah, right.” Niall was just as out of breath as him, but he immediately got up and tugged Zayn off the couch as well. Niall didn’t let go of Zayn’s hand while he was leading him upstairs and as soon as they got to Niall’s room and the door was closed behind them, they fell onto the bed, continuing their earlier make out session like nothing had ever interrupted them. Hands were roaming across bodies, shirts were taken off between long kisses and they felt like nothing else mattered in the world but their bodies being pressed together, leaving no space in between them.

 

They fell asleep with their legs tangled and Niall’s head resting on Zayn’s shoulder, and that’s how Louis found them the next morning to wake them, they had forgotten to set an alarm. They had been too lost in each other.

The drive to the airport was mostly quiet, mainly because they were all sleeping again. Louis’ mum was driving them, she wanted to say goodbye to Niall too, having grown fond of him while he stayed at her house. Harry had joined them this morning too, he couldn’t let his best friend leave without seeing him off at the airport.

Too quickly they arrived at the airport in Atlanta, one of the biggest airports in the world, and definitely one of the biggest Niall has ever seen.

The whole way to the security check, Niall didn’t let go of Zayn’s hand, he wanted to be able to remember how it felt for as long as possible. They still hadn’t talked about how they were going to do this, if they would try a long distance relationship or break up immediately, but Niall didn’t care. He wanted to stay Zayn’s boyfriend for at least a few minutes longer.

“Niall, I think we can’t go further now. You have to do the rest on your own, I’m sorry darling.” Louis’ mum announced in front of the security line. “It was so lovely having you here! You’re an absolute sunshine and it was so nice to meet you.” She said and hugged Niall tightly. After that, she took a few steps backwards and pretended to give them some privacy.

Harry’s goodbye was quite quick, he was the only one, who was sure, that he was going to see Niall again. “Take care of yourself and tell your family I’m sorry for what happened. I’ll see you in a few weeks!” Harry said and hugged Niall.

“I will, thanks Haz.”

Louis was next. He clung to Niall like he was his long lost brother who just came back from war, but sadly Niall had to leave and wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

“I love you, you stupid Irish fella. We’ll stay in contact!” He said and tried to smile. It was faltering a little bit but he managed to hold back the tears.

“I love you too, Louis.” Niall said, holding onto Louis for a second longer. “Of course we’ll stay in contact, wouldn’t want to miss your sass.” They both laughed a little, they knew that they both had found a friend for live.

Louis then stepped backwards and he and Harry joined his mum, giving Niall and Zayn some actual privacy.

Zayn launched forward and wrapped Niall up in a bones-crashing hug, he didn’t want to let go. He felt the tears prickling behind his eyes, soon they were going to stream down his cheeks.

“Niall, I l-“

“Don’t say it Zayn, you’ll only make things harder for both of us, please.” Niall interrupted Zayn’s confession. His eyes were so so sad, and there was nothing Zayn could do about it. He kissed him one last time and had to admit to himself that he was sadder about Niall leaving, than about the fact that Niall was leaving because his grandma had died. He even realized that he forgot about it for a second, just wishing Niall could stay a little longer.

 

“Flight 698 to Dublin is boarding in 10 minutes.” A voice announced over the speakers.

“Guess that means I have to go now.” Niall said, still holding onto Zayn.

“Yeah, I guess so too. Goodbye Niall, don’t forget about me.” Zayn said, the tears eventually spilling over.

“I won’t. Ever.” Niall responded, turned around and walked towards the security check. Before he went through the body scan, he turned around and waved one last time, looking at Zayn, Harry, Louis and his mother. Louis’ arm was thrown over Zayn’s shoulder and Harry’s hand was resting on Louis’ shoulder and Niall hoped that they were all going to stay friends.

Zayn watched him walk past the security guard and towards the gates.

And then he was gone.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so sorry that this took so long to be uploaded and I don't really have an excuse other than school and my habit of procrastinating to no end. it's also shorter than the other chapters but i hope you like it anyway.

They were skyping at least twice a week after Niall had left and Zayn always ended up crying into his pillow after they’ve said another goodbye. He missed Niall so much and he didn’t know how long he could take it to be without him.

The last weeks with the other exchange students flew by quickly, but maybe that was only because Zayn wasn’t very interested in them anymore. Except for Harry and Sophia maybe, they were still a part of their group.

One day Zayn asked Liam what he had with Sophia but he just said, with a sad look on his face:

“She said it would suck to have a long distance relationship and she doesn’t want to make her life depend on someone who was that far away…so we decided to just be friends.”

Zayn had the feeling that this wasn’t a mutual decision between the both of them but he partly agreed with Sophia. It did suck to have a long distance relationship.

The group of the six left people were always together, whenever they had lunch together or all of the exchange students did a trip to Atlanta, to a museum or some other place that was considered to be interesting enough for people from another country.

It felt like they’ve all known each other for a couple months even though it had only been a few weeks. But Zayn wasn’t able anymore to enjoy it as much as the others did because they reminded him a little bit too much of Niall. He absolutely loved Harry and Sophia as friends, but it was different. He didn’t feel like he’d miss them that much.

Very soon, all of the exchange students flew back home and all Zayn was able to say as a goodbye was:

“I’m gonna miss you and say Hi to Niall from me.”

Was he really going to miss them though? Yes, they had become great friends, but the distance would maybe be too much for such a fragile bond. They would probably text a little bit back and forth, maybe a skype call here and there, but after a couple of weeks or months they would lose the contact to each other.

Zayn and Niall kept skyping for a couple of weeks, but the skype calls got less with every passing week and when February came around and they were both very busy with studying, they never called each other anymore.

They just stopped talking in general, the distance and the pain being too much to handle for them in their busy last year of school.

One late afternoon, Zayn was sitting in his room and crying. The day had just been complete shit in general and on top of that, he didn’t know what to do with his future, because he really didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do after school and where he wanted to go. It was hard to decide, because he didn’t want to leave his family or his friends behind but he also didn’t want to do something that didn’t make him happy for the sake of his family’s happiness. But all of that wouldn’t be enough to make him cry, the thing that had brought him over the edge had been his sketchpad that he found underneath his bed, full with drawings and sketches of Niall. He missed the blonde boy so much, but he didn’t know if it was okay to text him.

While he was sitting there, drowning in his tears, his mum entered the room. When she saw him sitting on the floor, with the open sketchpad next to him, she immediately knew what was going on and got on her knees next to him.

“Oh Zayn…” She started.

“Mum, stop. I don’t want to hear anything about it, I know you’ve told me so before, I know you’ve said I should be careful because he could hurt me. But I thought it was worth it, I thought we could make it.” He was sobbing now.

“I didn’t want to say that. I know it hurts, it’s okay babe.” And that was all she said, she just hugged Zayn and let him cry on her shoulder, her motherly duty.

She just hoped Zayn would be okay soon, she hated seeing her son like that.

 

***

 

The school year was over sooner than Zayn realized because he was so busy with studying for his final exams and looking for colleges and universities to go to. He still thought a lot about Niall and he missed him to no end but he knew that texting or calling him wouldn’t make it any easier, for neither him nor Niall. So he stayed miserable on his own and hoped on one hand that Niall was happy without him, but simply thinking about Niall being just as happy as if nothing had happened caused a lot of heartache for Zayn, so on the other hand he hoped that Niall hadn’t forgotten him and was thinking about Zayn as much as Zayn did about Niall.

Zayn applied for some colleges around the states but he knew that in his heart, he wanted to go back to the UK because that was his home and that was where his roots were. So he mostly applied for colleges in the UK, like Manchester, London or Cardiff.

One day during that summer after his last days of school he got a letter in the mail. It was sent by the University of Manchester where he had applied for English Literature and Creative Writing. With slightly shaking hands he opened the letter and found that he was accepted and his first semester would start in September.

Still buzzing about the news he went to Louis’ house that evening, they wanted to play some FIFA and watch some movies.

“Lou, you will not believe what I got in the mail today!!” He announced when Louis opened the door.

“Umm…what is it then?” Louis looked slightly confused and a bit overwhelmed by the unusual excited greeting.

“I got into the University of Manchester!” He still couldn’t believe his luck; that had been his dream university.

“Are you serious?” Louis stared at him with wide open eyes. “I got into one in Liverpool! We’re going to live only one hour apart from each other!” He was now almost jumping up and down, he had been so afraid of Zayn and him living far apart. Zayn felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulders, at least he didn’t have to leave Louis then. Their college years were going to be so good!

 

So when the end of August came around, Zayn and Louis packed their belongings and flew off to their home country, expecting to have a great time there.

Zayn had searched for a place to live in online and had found a small flat near the campus which he shared with two girls, they seemed really nice and welcoming towards him in the one skype call he had with them to discuss his arrival and some other details. Zayn arrived one week before his semester started, he wanted to get used to the city and the people a little bit; it had been ages since he’d last been in the UK.

The first two days were really hard for him, everything was so different and he missed his family like crazy. He had always been annoyed at home, with three sisters running around, but now, sitting in his quiet room, his two flatmates barely being there, he missed hearing them scream, laugh or sing through the thin walls of his room back in the US. His room was furnished sporadically, a bed, a closet and a small desk standing around and Zayn didn’t feel welcomed by the empty walls. So on the third day, he decided he needed to change something and went to the city to buy some posters and to print some of his favorite pictures of his family and friends to hang up on the walls.

Standing in the print store in front of the printer, with his phone in his hand, deciding which pictures he should print, he was suddenly choking up and tears were welling up in his eyes. He was looking at a selfie of him and Niall, back when everything had been fine. It was on the drive to Savannah, Niall cuddled to his chest and looking up at Zayn’s face with so much adoration in his expression. Zayn’s eyes were almost squinted shut by the force of his smile, his tongue pressing to the back of his teeth, the smile he only showed when he was the happiest. It had been one of the best days with Niall and Zayn didn’t think anything could ever happen to them.

And there he was, standing in a print shop, alone and homesick, in an unknown environment, missing Niall as if it had been yesterday that Niall had to leave. It had been almost eight months since he and Niall stopped talking and his heart still hadn’t healed.

Being a bit masochistic, he decided to print the picture along with a few of Louis and him, his family and some of his other friends, like Liam. In another store he got a poster of Pink Floyd, a big canvas and some spray cans, to make his room look a little bit more personal.

When he got back to his new home, he immediately started to spray paint the canvas, adding some weird figures and words, with not much meaning behind it. It ended up looking really sick though, so he hung it up on the wall above his bed, spreading the pictures and the poster along the other walls. Looking at the finished decorations, he found that his room looked a lot comfier now and he immediately felt better.

His room now felt a lot more like home and he was able to relax a little and to stop worrying about his future in the UK. He decided to call Louis, to see how he was doing. They decided that Louis would come over on the next weekend to chat properly and just hang out like they always did back in the US, but first Zayn had to go through the first week of college.

He was really nervous Sunday night, barely able to sleep, but the next morning the nervousness was replaced by excitement, there was a reason he moved to England and he was going to make the best of it.

The first week was over really quickly, Zayn went to his lectures every day at 8am and got back to his flat at 3pm, still having to work on some texts because his professors didn’t care that they were new to everything around them. Sometimes he had to go grab some groceries as well, so that he fell into bed every night, exhausted after the long and exciting day.

Twice, he had gone to the coffee shop around the campus, desperately needing caffeine to keep him awake through all the new experiences he was making. On his way there and inside of the shop he saw a lot of interesting people walking around, loving the diversity and enjoying his freedom a lot more than in the first week.

When Louis came around the following weekend, it was as if they’ve just seen each other the day before, immediately falling into their usual habits around the other, talking excitedly over one another.

Suddenly Louis got off the bed on which they were half sitting, half lying, and was looking at the pictures on the wall.

“Have you talked to him again?” Louis asked, pointing at the picture of Niall and Zayn.

“No, I haven’t. But I feel like I see him everywhere, at every corner right now. It’s really weird, at least two times I thought I saw his blond hair standing out of the crowd. When I was queuing up at the coffee shop on Thursday, I could’ve sworn that I saw him walking past the store but when I got out, he was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know if my mind is playing any tricks on me because I miss him that much or if there’s some sort of doppelgänger walking around?” Zayn was really glad that he could talk to someone about this because he was about to go mental. And Louis was the perfect person to talk to about things like this, because he wasn’t going to make fun of Zayn for it and Zayn really appreciated that.

“Well, couldn’t it be him?” Louis asked carefully, knowing that this was a sensitive topic.

“No, I don’t think so. He told me, he wanted to apply in Dublin and maybe Glasgow but not around here.”

“And what if he changed his mind?”

“I don’t know Lou, maybe he did. But I don’t even know if I want it to be him or if I’m hoping that it’s someone else. What if he never wants to talk to me again and we always crash into each other on the campus? I don’t think my heart would survive that.”

“But why do you think he’s going to hate you? What if he’s really happy to see you and you can go on where you left off at?” Louis was looking at him, trying to decipher Zayn’s feelings.

“I…because I’m afraid. I loved him so much and I still do and I’m just so afraid that it won’t work out.” Zayn admitted slowly.

“But don’t you think it’ll be worth a try?”

Louis had a point right there, Zayn thought. The time he got to spend with Niall had been so amazing, he happily would take that amount of time once again and he didn’t care how much it was going to hurt if it all ended. The time together would be worth it. Now he just had to find out if it really was Niall he saw at least twice last week or if his mind had played tricks on him because he had been hoping for a familiar face too much.

So when Louis left that night and Zayn had classes the next morning he thought about a plan on how to meet that blond stranger or maybe not that much of a stranger. He tried to not get his hopes up too high, but he wasn’t being very successful. His plan was to go to the coffee shop more often and to run after the blond guy, no matter what he was doing in that certain moment. And until the guy appeared there was nothing left than to wait.

The first time Zayn went to grab a coffee was on Monday during two lectures, but it wasn’t just because he wanted to see someone but also because he felt like he was dead on his feet. He didn’t even know why he was that tired but he definitely needed the caffeine to survive right then.

At the shop he couldn’t help but look around constantly, scanning the people there for someone blond. There were a couple blond ones but definitely not someone that looked like Niall and Zayn went back to his next lecture without seeing him. But what did he think? That he was immediately going to see him everywhere just because he admitted to himself and to Louis that it could actually be Niall and not just some confusing mind thing? Very unlikely.

On Thursday he was close to giving up on ever seeing Niall again. It had only been four days but he hadn’t seen him once in that time and the countless trips to the coffee shop, wasting money for coffee he didn’t really need, and it seemed more like a million years to Zayn. But he decided to try it one last time and as he ordered his usual caramel macchiato he heard a boisterous laugh that couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else’s than Niall’s. His heart started racing incredibly fast and his hands immediately started to sweat. He didn’t think he’d ever get to hear that sound again and in that moment he thought it was the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard.

 

His hands were shaking when he took his coffee from the barista, who already recognized him because of his many visits. He slowly turned around and searched for the source of the angelic sound.

And there he was, sitting in a corner booth with four other people, laughing and smiling like Zayn remembered him just too well.

Actually seeing him, sitting there, not even 10 meters away from Zayn, made him freeze. All of a sudden, Zayn wasn’t able to move the slightest bit, even though he was blocking the way of the other customers. He didn’t know what to do. Should he go up to Niall’s table and ask if he could talk to him? Should he wait outside and talk to him when Niall left the coffee shop?

That decision was quickly taken care of when he heard a familiar voice saying disbelievingly:

“Zayn?!”

When Zayn looked up and focused his eyes back on reality, Niall was standing a lot closer to him. He must’ve gotten up while Zayn was lost in his thoughts. Zayn stared at him, he hadn’t really changed, except his brown roots were showing a little bit more, his last dye must’ve been a while ago. The freckles across his nose and the slight blush on his cheeks were still the same. But his eyes weren’t shining as happily and his brows were furrowed in confusion. That’s when Zayn realized that he still hadn’t said anything and that he probably was the reason for that confused look on Niall’s face.

“Um…” Very great start to the conversation, Zayn, amazing.

“Hi…” He managed to say with a sheepish smile on his lips.

“What are you doing here?” Niall asked, still not looking too pleased to see him.

“I’m buying a coffee?” Zayn asked, not sure what Niall wanted to hear. Said boy snorted surprisingly but immediately stopped when he realized himself.

“No, I mean, here, in this city or even England!”

“Oh…I’m studying here…” Zayn admitted and wanted to run. How could one person be that awkward?

“Wow, what a coincidence!” Niall said, obviously still fighting with his emotions. Zayn could very well relate to that; he had spent a whole week figuring out if he wanted to see Niall again or if he wanted to avoid him for the entirety of his college years.

“Yeah, I know! Neither was I expecting to see you here, thought you’d be somewhere in Ireland, to be honest.” Zayn tried to sound normal although his mind was going crazy right now. He was actually talking to Niall, who he had fallen in love with a couple of month ago and wanted to spend his life with. But then, when he had almost accepted that he wasn’t going to see him again, he met him in a stupid coffee shop and his heart was racing like the day he realized he was in love.

“Talk about not expecting to see you here!” Niall laughed. “I never would’ve thought that you would cross the ocean to study.”

“It never seemed that weird to me. Although I mainly grew up in the States, I still consider England as my home country. It feels right to be here.” Zayn admitted. He was surprised as to how easily the conversation was still flowing between them. Like all those months of heartbreak and silence didn’t even happen.

“I understand what you mean. Ireland will forever be the place I call home, no matter how long I’ve been away.”

“Do you wanna go somewhere else maybe?” Zayn asked suddenly. They were still standing in the middle of the coffee shop and the curious looks of Niall’s friends were slowly making Zayn uncomfortable.

“Oh…yeah sure, I’m just gonna tell the others that I’m leaving.” And with that, Niall turned around to talk to his friends and Zayn was back to freaking out. What was he thinking, asking that? Where were they supposed to be going now? The only neutral place Zayn knew was this shop and the only option left now was his flat. He hoped Niall wouldn’t feel uncomfortable going there, he didn’t want to pressure him into doing something he wasn’t ready for or ruin everything again by being too fast forward.

The walk to his flat was mostly quiet, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence at all. Zayn was glad anyway when they got to his door 10 minutes later. Niall was looking around his room, absorbing everything.

“It’s nice here.” Niall eventually said. “Who’s living with you? Louis?”

“Oh no, two girls are living in the other rooms, I found them through the internet. Louis is in Liverpool though.”

“It’s nice to have a friend here with you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I don’t feel completely lost, knowing he’s just an hour away and not 10 or something. What’s Harry doing?”

“He’s here in Manchester too. Studying photography.”

“That seems perfect for him.” Zayn remembered the camera that never left Harry’s hands.

“It is. But shouldn’t we talk about ourselves instead of our friends? Why did you stop calling? I thought we could make it, you know. I really thought we had something special that could overcome all the obstacles.” Saying these words, Niall sounded hurt and sad. Zayn didn’t want to hear or see him like that.

“Niall, I’m so sorry. I thought that too and I really wanted to try, but I was so caught up in all the school stuff and at some point I lost all of my hope. You were so far away and I thought time wouldn’t pass by at all when I didn’t get to see or touch you. And being stupid as I am, I thought it would be easier for the both of us if we just stopped what we had. I thought missing you like that would be over when we weren’t together anymore. I hoped I could forget you and the pain. But to be honest, it got worse. But I also thought that it would be better for you if you didn’t have to talk to me all the time and I hoped you could move on and be happier without me. There are so many people who would deserve you and who you could be happy with and those people weren’t thousands of miles away from you. So I thought, even though it was incredibly hard for myself, that you would be better off without me and I stopped calling.”

“Do you honestly think that I go around all the time, searching for people I could date? When I already found the guy that seemed perfect for me? Why should I be better off without that person? Why did you think it would be so easy for me to forget you, after I fell in love with you after a couple of days only?”

“I…I don’t know.” Zayn knew that his reasoning didn’t make sense, but at that time it had seemed logical to him. “You fell in love with me?”

“Yes of course I did, you idiot.” Niall laughed and stepped forward, so that he was standing close to Zayn. “And I thought about you every day, hoping I’d ever get to see you again.”

He was so close to Zayn now that all he could see was the blue of Niall’s eyes and yet again, Zayn thought he was looking at the summer sky. Niall’s hand was carefully curling around his neck.

“And now you’re here, still as beautiful as I remembered you.” Zayn could feel Niall’s breath fanning over his lips, their lips almost touching. “And I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I saw you standing there in the coffee shop.” And finally Niall moved forward the last inch and was kissing Zayn. It felt like the first time all over again and Zayn’s stomach was doing somersaults while his heart was beating out of his chest. He was grabbing Niall’s hip to keep him close, because he felt like if he let go now, he would lose him again. And he never wanted that to happen again.

Eventually they broke apart, trying to catch their breath.

“I’m glad you didn’t forget about me that easily and didn’t search for someone else.” Zayn admitted sheepishly.

“I’m glad your plan of forgetting me didn’t work out either.” Niall was grinning at him and the sun was back in his eyes.

“I’m not planning on trying that again.”

“Good.” Niall muttered, leaning in for the next kiss.

In that moment, Zayn knew that he would always try his best to keep Niall by his side. He was the person who could make him smile, no matter what. He was the sun that lit up his otherwise normal and uneventful life, and Zayn never ever wanted to live that life ever again.

He had known it from the moment he saw Niall standing in front of him in his high school library, even before he knew his name.

He had always been his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this whole fic and i love you if you've read the whole thing and stuck by this even though i updated so late.  
> visit me on [tumblr](http://ziallerslouve.tumblr.com)


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